Apple backs out of backing OpenAI, report claims
arstechnica.com
Apple dropped out of the $6.5 billion investment round at the 11th hour.
  • Toto@lemmy.world
    112·
    2 months ago

    This will definitely cause pause amongst the non-cost sunk companies. They will be wondering what Apple knows.

    IMO this signals the lack of clear ROI versus maintenance costs. Silicone Valley is used to funding huge projects like Amazon which took years to choke out the competition and make money. But AI is a new market which is more interesting to investors than people who didn’t want it in their mouse.

      • floofloof@lemmy.caEnglish
        601·
        2 months ago

        You know what they meant by the first one. The second one is about people not being interested in dumb products like the Logitech AI mouse. Corporations are all jamming AI into their products and marketing materials not because users like it (they don’t) but because they hope it will attract investors. So AI is more interesting to investors than to people who don’t want it in their mouse.

        • dohpaz42@lemmy.worldEnglish
          20·
          2 months ago

          …the Logitech AI mouse.

          That should be false advertising; both to consumers and investors. There is nothing AI about a dedicated button preprogrammed to launch an application that does the AI for you.

          But I guess that further demonstrates your point about companies cramming shit in consumer’s faces to appease investors. It’s still a huge WTF in my book though.

        • Ack@lemmy.ca
          14·
          2 months ago

          Holy crap! When he said “AI mouse” I thought it was a joke. I mean it is, but, like, I thought it was an amusing fictional story.

        • Noodle07@lemmy.world
          1·
          2 months ago

          And then here I am still waiting for an AI to correct my horrible typing accuracy on my phone…

    • drdiddlybadger@pawb.social
      161·
      2 months ago

      Not only is AI a new market but it’s the only market where someone with way less investment can leapfrog the shit out of you and that group can just release shit for free just to stab you in the dick after billions of investment. Open AI only has a hope if it can get massive state level contracts to fund it, likely by offering some type of surveillance service which they aren’t even specced for but models like these are great at. Just all round bad investment decision to buy into them unless you know what they’re planning.

    • 100@fedia.io
      5·
      2 months ago

      the current tech is really unsustainable with its cost to usefulness ratio

      needs a lot of optimisation to make it work and less “brute forcing” the models

  • xantoxis@lemmy.worldEnglish
    60·
    2 months ago

    I don’t care for a lot of what Apple does, but there’s no denying they understand how to make money–and how to avoid losing it.

  • just_an_average_joe@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    14·
    2 months ago

    That’s good marketing. OpenAI recently went for profit on steroids. They are increasing chatgpt plus price, they backed out of providing free credits to startups, they also made it so Sam Altman would have full control over the company (basically non-profit board is no longer involved).

    Not to mention sama first made outrageous claims about how he needs a crazy amount of energy for AI training and now that MS and other governments are starting to fulfill those requirements, he is changing the goal post to even more outrageous claims. Like literally he said if the world does not do this, there will be wars fought over AI in the future and only rich people will have access to AI.

  • Random123@fedia.io
    3·
    2 months ago

    So what does this mean for the so called apple intelligence that was coning out later next year?

    • interurbain1er@sh.itjust.works
      161·
      2 months ago

      Apple intelligence is their own project, with their own models. They bought a company specialized in AI at the edge (or on device). All the “AI” that will interact with user’s data is Apple’s.

      Still waiting to see what the chat-gpt integration is exactly, but the more I read about it the more it seems it just the usual writing assistant that we will soon find in every text and image editor. And the hint that they will offer Gemini or other model as well really mean they haven’t tied any real features to it.

      • mbtrhcs@feddit.org
        3·
        2 months ago

        According to the keynote at least, the integration is literally just Siri offering to defer to ChatGPT for some requests. Basically a more advanced version of “here’s what I found on the web” if it doesn’t know what to do otherwise.

        Funnily enough, Apple isn’t even paying OpenAI for that, they’re literally saying it’s for exposure.

    • Michal
      3·
      2 months ago

      It’s their inhouse project, so if they’ll probably focus their efforts on it if they’re no longer investing in 3rd party.

      • Random123@fedia.io
        1·
        2 months ago

        As a degenerate who bought the new iphone for a much needed upgrade, this sounds promising

  • erenkoylu@lemmy.mlEnglish
    2·
    2 months ago

    This is not suprising. Anthropic models are clearly better than OpenAI ones. OpenAI no longer has a secret sauce that everyone wants to pay billions for.

  • Ganbat@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    1·
    2 months ago

    Okay, I have no idea what the hell is going on here. I don’t follow this stuff, and last I heard, Sam Altman was the good guy who was kicked out of OpenAI because he was focused on ethics while they were focused on profit.